I KNEW a little bit of Prof. Wertheim when I, as an undergraduate, read his work, Indonesian Society in Transition. The book is a perceptive sociological analysis even if to me at the time, it had an unintended impact. Reading it prompted me to recognize the value of the empirical, the ubiquity of social relations, and the importance of thinking history.

Indeed, the book served as an antidote to the high dosage of metaphysics I re